Miller Ross wrote:
> <...>
>> That said, we as an industry do owe Microsoft one significant debt.
> The standardization of Microcomputer hardware.
I am not so sure. Microsoft deals (at least dealt) with software, not
hardware.
I am not completely sure if there is someone who shall get the credit or
if it was just a coincidence that the PC the is the "winner". If someone
must get some credit, that shall be given to IBM and Donald Estridge.
Donald was responsible for building the PC based on an open architecture
and to use components (software and hardware) from outside of IBM. Open
architecture and off-the-shelf components made the IBM PC architecture
becoming the de-facto standard.
I believe that these are the same fundaments of beowulf, why the PC grew
so much during this period, and a good example of how open standards
promote innovation.
Ariel
> Up until DOS the world was so fragmented it was impossible to launch
> anything in the software, or even specialized hardware arena using
> economies of scale. With the world standardizing on the PC platform
> with DOS stability and real desktop productivity gains became
> possible. Alan Greenspan addressed congress in 1997. Having watched
> the address I was personally impressed with his statement that the US.
> per-capita GDP was dramatically higher than any other nation at that
> time, because the US had a PC on pretty much every worker's desk that
> needed access to a PC. Microsoft brought the US that standardization,
> and those productivity gains.
>> To the best of my recollection it went.
>> U.S. 1.0 (normalized)
> Japan .92
> Germany .87
> UK same range
> and it went WAY down from there.
>> That same low cost microcomputer is what we base our Beowulf clusters
> on today, essentially a more reliable beefier version of a desktop
> PC. Just as we don't want Beowulf to be overridden by 'adopt,
> assimilate, and expand', we should give the credit where credit is due
> that we are not using Commodore 64's, TI's, Atari's, or DEC- Rainbows
> as cluster nodes.
>> Ross
>
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